[The Silent Threshold — Exterior Camp — Day 67 — 6:30 PM]
They left the Silent Threshold before dark.
Not because the Threshold was dangerous at night — but because Seraph had calculated that processing what Alex had received required outside space, mountain air, and not being in the same place where it had happened.
The makeshift camp a hundred meters from the Threshold's entrance — the same distance they had kept the first time they saw it, which now felt like a reasonable distance between the team and something that was still too large to fully process.
The fuel‑tablet fire.
The team around it.
And Alex sitting with his back against the mountain rock, corruption dropping slowly with the passive help of Emily's Purifying Light, telling the team what the transmission had contained.
---
Not everything arrived in order.
